Juveniles for Justice post: Group would have defended turnpike killer

Last summer, after paying a visit to my dentist, Dr. Bob Couch in Lamar, as I headed toward my car a woman pulled up alongside me and started talking. I immediately recognized Peggy Gordon though it had been more than a decade since I had last seen her.

I have only talked to Peggy once or twice since the event that changed her family's life, Jan. 10, 1994, when two Oklahoma teenagers threw a rock from the Will Rogers Turnpike onto a car, where it crashed through the windshield and killed Peggy's daughter Sheila Mayfield.

I had just become managing editor of The Carthage Press less than a month earlier and already the area had seen more violence than it had during the first three and a half years I worked for the newspaper. It was only about two weeks earlier that eight-year-old Doug Ringler had been murdered. That murder affected Carthage for years to come. But I never knew Doug Ringler. Sheila Mayfield, I had known for years.

It was only a few months earlier that I had written a feature about Sheila and her infant son Clayton, who was selected grand champion of the annual Jasper Appreciation Days Baby Show. Now because of a violent act, Clayton Mayfield and his older brother had to grow up without a mother.

When I wrote the post about the impending release of one of her killers, Paul Murray, from prison on Oct. 21, I threw in a gratuitous remark about Justice for Juveniles, the group that has been clamoring to have Memorial Middle School shooter Thomas Gregory White tried as a juvenile.

Murray was 16 years old when he took part in Sheila Mayfield's murder. His partner in crime, Benji Trammel, was 15. Trammel was tried as as juvenile and has been free ever since. Murray served four months shock time in prison and was released. Finally, three years ago following a probation violation, he was sent to prison.

I can still recall the horror I felt when I read the story one of my reporters at The Press, John Hacker, wrote about one of Murray's hearings in 1998. He wrote that Murray was initially charged with first degree murder after Oklahoma officers found a notebook in Murray's school locker which depicted the same scenario which had claimed Sheila Mayfield's life (complete with the same results).

Apparently, there is no crime that is too brutal, too calculating, too cold-blooded, for some of the members of Justice for Juveniles to even consider charging a juvenile as an adult.

One group member, Flamom, writes:

I couldn't get involved with "this one" i wasn't a member of j4j in 1999,if I had been and if at 16 he was going to be tried as an adult I would have gotten involved "with this one."

Apparently, Justice for Juveniles cannot even consider the possibility that someone who disagrees with them may have a legitimate argument. For the most part, since I have written about Thomas Gregory White, I have become a target for group members who believe that no good teacher could possibly be in favor of a teen being charged as an adult.

Another member, Cari Barichello, writes:

Well if Mr. Turner is reading, hello MAN! You being a teacher and obviously so against child advocacy may accept that you are in the wrong profession. Not to mention that since it has been established that Thomas was a bullied child in the school system, you being a teacher show no ethics at all....no matter what school you "Randy" are employed with.

I would hope that other teachers and school officials do not follow his guidelines and footsteps in the slandering of children. If my child were in his school and district, I would be second guessing his ability to teach and mentor any child HE DEEMS FIT FOR SOCIETY OR NOT!

In fact, I feel this man really needs to be addressed through the school Admin ASAP. Val please post the link you got this from.

I am certainly shaking in fear. For these people, who have never set foot in a Joplin school, to make such ready assurances that I am not fit to teach or for that matter to claim to know exactly what happened in Memorial Middle School, is the height of arrogance.

The members of Justice for Juveniles claim to be advocates for children, and I have no reason to doubt them, but someone needs to be an advocate for the children who were not involved in this shooting or any other episode of school violence, the children who would never dream of taking a weapon to their school and murdering their classmates.

On the day Thomas Gregory White took an assault weapon to Memorial Middle School, the one shot he was able to get off was a shot that echoed across the Joplin R-8 School District.

These out-of-state advocates did not have to deal with the fear that innocent kids, not just the ones at Memorial, but those at South and North middle schools had to face. I cannot imagine what the teachers, administrators, and students at Memorial went through. I hope I never have to go through such an ordeal. But as any teacher who was at South Middle School can tell you, the fear that was felt at Memorial that day, was also felt at South. "How can this happen here?" I had more than one eighth grader ask. I had no answers, at least none that could relieve their fears.

And please do not give me this nonsense that has been parroted about by Justice for Juveniles about how Thomas White was bullied and nothing was ever done about it. Their posts make it appear that no policy was ever in place in the Joplin R-8 School District until after Thomas White fired his rifle into the ceiling. In fact, the school district has had a bullying policy in effect for as long as I have been here (four years) and I am sure that the policy was in place long before I arrived. All teachers go through training to know what to look for and how to deal with bullying.

I do not know the extent of the bullying that Thomas White suffered, but I do know that teachers are constantly on the lookout for bullying and if any complaints were ever made, the situation was addressed.

Perhaps, as the Justice for Juveniles members have said, trying and convicting Thomas White as an adult will not serve as a deterrent to others who might think about taking a gun into a school.

Maybe it is enough that it will reassure students who would never dream of doing such a thing that someone is looking out for their interests.